


Take my heart with you

by DramaticalHearts (kusokawaii)



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Discord: The Kingdom of Shipping (Dr. STONE), Dog Tags, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gift Giving, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Slight feminization, TKS Events, TKSloveweekend2021, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29410095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kusokawaii/pseuds/DramaticalHearts
Summary: Stanley and Xeno aren't going to let a tour of duty keep them from celebrating Valentine's Day — at least not from exchanging gifts for it.Stanley knows it's a difficult task to match his fiancé's best efforts in gift-giving... but this year, the hopelessly romantic Xeno just might have him beat by a mile...[For TKS's Love Weekend day 3!]
Relationships: Stanley Snyder/Dr. Xeno
Kudos: 27
Collections: TKS Love/Valentine's Weekend 2021





	Take my heart with you

Valentine’s Day.

A day full of cliches, tackiness, commercialism and obligations.

It wasn’t exactly the kind of occasion that one would expect _Stanley Snyder,_ the tough-as-nails U.S. Marine Captain, would acknowledge, much less celebrate.

But, it just so happened that his long-time boyfriend, now _fiancé,_ was a hopeless, endlessly sentimental romantic… so he tried his best to at least play along every year.

Even — and especially — during times when they had to be apart on February fourteenth.

A few days before that date, Dr. Xeno Wingfield’s cell phone rang, him answering as soon as he saw the name on the caller ID.

“Hey, you pick up the mail yet?” Stanley’s voice said on the other end. “The tracking said my package arrived early.”

“Ah, I’ll go check it now,” Xeno said, and Stanley could hear rustling on the other end of the line, and the opening and closing of the mailbox. “Yes, it appears your package is here. Am I allowed to open it?” Xeno answered, and Stanley could almost hear the smile on his lips as he said it.

“It’s yours, go ahead,” Stanley said. “Early Valentine’s gift, brought to you by the postal service.”

Xeno chuckled. “What if I want to wait for Valentine’s Day? So we can open our gifts together.”

“Don’t worry about it. You can enjoy it in the meantime, and I’m _positive_ that it can’t beat whatever you’ve got cooked up this year.”

“Heh, admitting defeat already?”

“You and I both know it’d be hard to outdo that star map I got you last year.”

Xeno laughed again, remembering the custom print of the position of the stars on the night of their first kiss that now hung on his bedroom wall. “That’s true. I suppose you’re allowed to relax a bit, _just_ this once.”

“All right,” Stanley said, Xeno hearing the creak of a chair on the other end as his partner reclined. “No complaining allowed then, right?”

“Well now I’m worried,” Xeno replied, in a tone of voice that said he really wasn’t, as he reentered the house. “What could it possibly be?”

“Only one way to find out~” Stanley said in a teasing tone.

“Alright, give me a minute.”

Stanley waited, listening as Xeno went back inside and prepared.

“Okay, opening it now,” Xeno said at last, and started to open the small box that had arrived.

Once it was opened and unpacked, there was a span of silence on the other end of the line.

When he spoke, his disappointment was palpable. _“Stanley…”_

Stanley burst out into laughter. “Take a picture with it and send it to me, _please.”_

Xeno sighed. “Alright…”

Stanley waited, and a minute later, he received a text message with a photo attached — of a blushing, frowning Xeno, holding a coffee mug that had one word printed on it, written in an elegant script — _Wifey._

Stanley laughed even harder. 

Xeno sighed again. “May I ask why? I certainly can’t use this at work…”

“Use it at home, then,” Stanley said through his laughter. “And, I dunno… I came across it when I was trying to come up with somethin’ for ya. They had one that said ‘hubby’, but that sounded weird as hell. Like, what is this, the fifties? Doesn’t fit you at all.”

“And ‘wifey’ does?”

“Well…” It was Stanley’s turn to blush now. “I mean… you’re always looking out for me, making sure I have what I need, and sticking up for me if someone’s giving me bullshit. I can handle stuff myself, but… I know I can always rely on you for backup. And that’s kind of like what a wife does, right? _‘Behind every great man’_ and all that.”

“Mmm…” Xeno uttered, and Stanley waited.

“...Alright. I can accept that. Thank you,” Xeno said sincerely. “I’m still not using it at work, though.”

Stanley gave another laugh. “That’s fine, I didn’t want you to. Though I’d be flattered if you did.”

“We’ll see,” Xeno allowed. “Ah, your _wifey_ has to go now. Love you.”

“You too.”  
  


* * *

  
When Valentine’s Day dawned, Stanley, unfortunately, woke up without his partner by his side. He was still on his tour of duty, his last before their wedding. He accepted it, was fine with it… but on a day like this, he couldn’t help but feel lonely.

So when he received his mail for the day, he lit up at seeing a certain name on the return address.

Xeno had told him to video call when he received his package, but when he checked the time, he realized that it was _entirely_ too early in the morning in his partner’s time zone for him to be coherent.

So he waited, though he couldn’t resist giving the box a shake or two; the results were inconclusive.

Finally, he was free to call Xeno a few hours later.

A smile broke out on his face at the sight of him on his computer’s screen, making Xeno smile too.

“Hey, how’s it goin’?” Stanley greeted.

“Going well. Just had breakfast,” Xeno said, and took a sip of coffee… from the mug Stanley got him. “How are things there?”

“Same ol’, same ol’,” Stanley said. “Wish I was there with ya.”

“I do too,” Xeno said with a wistful smile. “So, it arrived safely?”

“Sure did. Pretty small though.”

“Heh, it’s no less special, I assure you.” 

“I have no doubt,” Stanley smiled.

“Well, go ahead and open it,” Xeno said, projecting a calm aura, but Stanley could see the eagerness that lay just beneath. “I ordered it weeks ago; it’s custom-made.”

_“Ohh,_ like what I got you last year?” Stanley grinned.

“Kind of~” Xeno said with a crooked smile.

Stanley opened the box, and the smaller one that lay within… and found a necklace inside, its pendant styled like a dog tag. On its front wasn’t writing, but two long, uneven lines, one thin and the other thick, with dips and peaks.

“What… is this?”

On the video call, Xeno softly smiled, his cheeks starting to pinken. “Well… those lines you see there… is my heartbeat.”

That knocked the breath out of Stanley. “Oh,” he managed to utter, staring down at it as he felt warmth rising in his own face.

“You know… on the golden records that went with the Voyager spacecrafts in the seventies, there was a recording of a human heartbeat. Ann Druyan’s, to be exact. She said that it was recorded the day after Carl Sagan proposed to her… so now the heartbeat of a young woman madly in love is drifting out there in space,” Xeno said with a fond smile. “When I saw this online, I thought of that… and I decided I wanted to make a record of sorts of my own, that you could take with you. I thought of you when I had it recorded… I think it came through.”

While Xeno spoke, Stanley had slowly slumped onto his desk, hiding his now-red face in his arm and softly groaning.

“Why are there two?” he said, his voice slightly muffled by his shirt sleeve.

“Ah, I couldn’t decide between an electrocardiogram or an audio recording… so I went with both,” Xeno replied with a small chuckle. “Elegant, aren’t they? It’s said that a human’s heartbeat is as unique as a fingerprint. They’re starting to be used in biometrics identification systems, as a matter of fact.”

Stanley lifted his head at last, remembering something. “Yeah… actually, the Special Forces requested something like that from the Pentagon recently… some kinda laser that can identify people from far away…”

“Oh, really? Science is elegant indeed...” Xeno smiled. “Back to the subject at hand though. I heard a phrase recently, that your heart doesn’t just belong to you, but to everyone who cares about you,” Xeno continued, looking down but still smiling, “I suppose that’s what I was thinking about, too.”

“...Yeah,” Stanley said, running his thumb over the raised lines.

“And certainly… if my heart belongs to anyone else, it would be you. So, while you’re away, you can carry a part of me with you.”

“Ahhh…” Stanley said, wincing as he felt a new wave of heat in his face, feeling the need to hide it again. “How can you _say_ such sappy things with a straight face?!”

“Do you hate it?” Xeno said with a small laugh.

“Mmmm…” Stanley uttered, and Xeno waited. 

“...Mm!” He lifted his head in one swift movement, pulled the necklace from its box, and put the chain over his head, the pendant jingling audibly from the motion. 

“...I love it,” he said then in a small voice, rubbing the pendant idly between his thumb and index fingertips. “Thank you.”

Xeno gave a light laugh. “I’m glad. You should probably put that on with your other dog tags though, because the chains might tangle… Would that be allowed?” he mused.

“Even if it’s not, I don’t care,” Stanley said. “The other guys wear crosses and shit, they can let this slide too. They’ll have to take this off my dead body.”

“Well, that’s the general idea behind dog tags…” Xeno said with a little nervous chuckle.

Stanley recalled his words, and he laughed too, the two sharing a laugh for one happy moment.

“See? I was right,” Stanley said then. “There was no way I could outdo this.”

“I don’t know,” Xeno said coyly, looking at his coffee mug. “I’ve come around on this. It’s not _equal,_ but I appreciate the meaning behind it. This isn’t a competition, Stan. I don’t think there’s anything you could do for me that I wouldn’t like.”

“Don’t give me a challenge,” Stanley smirked, and they laughed again.

“I’m glad you don’t think it’s too embarrassing,” Xeno said then.

“Nah, it’s cool. I mean, I’m not gonna go around showing it to all the guys, but if anyone sees it and asks, I’m gonna tell ‘em that my nerdy fiancé got it for me.” Stanley paused, his eyes widening as an idea came to him. “And as soon as I’m back, I’m gonna make one of these for you!”

Xeno chuckled. “It’s a date. I’ll let my friend from university know. He took the readings for me.”

They talked on after that, updating each other on the happenings in their lives and joking and laughing like always. Too soon, Stanley had to end the voice call.

“Love you,” he said first, in a low whisper near the mic.

“Love you always,” Xeno said back, his words and warm smile making Stanley’s heart flip.

He sat back in his chair for a moment after the call ended, taking it all in before he had to go back to work.

Xeno always had a way of making him _feel things,_ in ways he couldn’t verbalize or describe, that no one and nothing else had ever made him feel. Expressing his love in words was never easy for Stanley, it always sounding either stupid or wrong to his ears; he much preferred to let his body do the talking, which was impossible to do with thousands of miles and an ocean between them. But Xeno did it so _easily._ Stanley couldn’t help but be a bit envious, underneath his flustered feelings.

After giving himself a moment to muse, he tucked his new necklace into his shirt, and went on with his work for the day.

When night fell, Stanley went back to the barracks, exhausted. Before he fell asleep, he looked at his new dog tag again (after disentangling its chain from the other one; Xeno had predicted that correctly).

In the dim light, he looked closely at the engraved lines, running a fingertip along them. _They really are elegant, huh?_ Stanley thought, his lips quirking in a slight smile.

Another finger felt something else, on the back of the pendant. He turned it over, and found an engraving of words:

_With you, X._

Stanley let out a fond sigh, his smile widening.

He peered around, and when he was sure no one was watching, he placed a kiss on the tag, then took it into his palm, and pressed it to his chest, over his heart.

Xeno’s words echoed in his head:

_“If my heart belongs to anyone else, it would be you.”_

“Same to you,” he whispered into the stillness of the night, feeling his pulse beneath his fingertips.

**Author's Note:**

> How many times am I going to reference the Voyager golden records in my Dr. Stone fics?? _As many times as possible._  
>  This time, it was inspired by [this podcast interview with the band The Avalanches](https://www.kexp.org/podcasts/sound-vision/2021/1/28/avalanches-find-inspiration-interstellar-love/), where they talk about Ann Druyan's contribution to the golden record! Give it a listen if you're interested, it's pretty cool.  
> I stumbled upon [the Pentagon's project](https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/27/238884/the-pentagon-has-a-laser-that-can-identify-people-from-a-distanceby-their-heartbeat/) while confirming what I knew about heartbeats being used for biometrics — it's cool and kinda creepy at the same time, ahaha 😅  
> Originally the piece of jewelry was going to be a ring, after I'd read about such a thing in another fanfic and couldn't get the idea out of my head; when I finally looked into the real thing, I discovered that they make [dog tags](https://heartbeatkeepsakes.com/heartbeat-jewelry/heartbeat-dog-tag/) like that too!  
> [This is the kind of star map](https://www.etsy.com/listing/767085773/night-sky-when-we-met-personalized-gift?ref=finds_l&external=1&frs=1) that Stanley got Xeno. It's so... them. ❤  
> And [here's the mug](https://www.target.com/p/15oz-stoneware-stackable-wifey-coffee-mug-white-threshold-8482/-/A-52113252) that Stanley got Xeno, hehe (Yeah, I'm still not over that "caring wife" translation...)  
> ([screencap link](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/669945969445437446/808081278519345152/unknown.png) in case the store link stops working)  
> I actually wanted to draw the selfie that Xeno took with it, but I didn't have enough time to — feel free to draw it if you want to, lol  
> Oh, and if there's anything I got glaringly wrong about military stuff, let me know and I can try to fix it — I don't have much experience with such things, and I didn't know who to ask about it on short notice.
> 
> Feel free to join the Dr. Stone shipping server on Discord! All ships are welcome! We have lots of events scheduled, RP our fav ships, share headcanons, fanart, fic and more! [Click here to join us~!](https://discord.gg/N7ejy2W)


End file.
